Forenoon watch, 1 bell (8:58 am)
Yesterday we almost had some serious thunderstorms (I could hear some thunder in the distance, anyway), but just before sunset, directly out from my bay window, a giant rainbow appeared. You can just barely see the second, piggyback rainbow to the left of it, too.
Rainbow in Mandarin Chinese is: 彩虹 (cai3 hong2). The first character, cai (the 'c' is pronounced with a ts sound, cai rhymes with the English word 'die'), means color. The second one, hong according to Zhongwen.com suggests a snake-like meaning and is pronounced with a long 'o', like in 'home'. I've only seen hong around the word rainbow, or neon (Mandarin: 霓虹, pronounced ni2 hong2).